Social Biographies As World History

"Social Biographies as World History" is a project of the Center for World History of the University of California, Santa Cruz. It provides some model social biographies for classroom and university teachers.

The social biographies featured on this page were created by World History graduate students in the UCSC Ph.D. program under the direction of then directory Edmund Burke III.

Social biography is an attempt to understand the trajectories of ordinary people's lives through the systematic application of the research strategies of social history and the encompassing vision of world history. By reading the facts of these lives through the lens of world history, social biographies cast new light on the standard world historical narrative, with its emphasis on large scale change.

The writing of social biographies as world history has proved a remarkable pedagogical project for many graduate and undergraduate students of world history at UCSC over the last decade. Writing the social biography of an ordinary individual provides an occasion for historians to sharp research skills and improve their understanding of social processes.

Many of the social biographies featured on the right were presented at past meetings of the World History Association on the theme of social biography and world history by current and former UCSC world history graduate students. Kevin MacDonald's essay on Thomas Tew and Anders Otterness' essay on Estavinco were originally presented to the World History Workshop, a Multi-Campus Research Group of the University of California.